Hysteresis performance analysis of reinforced concrete thin-walled piers with rectangular hollow cross-section under bi-directional low cyclic loading based on fiber beam-column element

In this paper, the basic situation of bi-axial quasi-static testing of fourteen reinforced concrete thin-walled piers with hollow cross-section was firstly introduced. And then, the basic procedure to establish finite element model of the piers based fiber beam-column element was carried out. Finally, the analytic results including bidirectional hysteresis curves and skeleton curves were compared with the test ones. The main conclusions are listed as follows: (1) Analytical hysteresis curves and skeleton curves agree well with the test ones generally; (2) Calculating ultimate load is generally smaller than the test ones while the calculating ultimate deformation is a few bigger; (3) Nonlinear finite element model established by nonlinear fiber beam-column element has a good prediction of nonlinear mechanical properties in action of bidirectional cyclic static loading and can be used further for parameter analysis.